April 22, 2009

Chilly Reception. By: MoToMo (Flickr)

I was given the prognosis almost 2 years ago, now. I’ve always thought I’ve coped with stress pretty well – people generally perceive me as a calming influence (that, or “too bloody laid back!”), although it’s probably more accurate to say that I have a repressive personality.

In other words, I seem to possess the ability to simply put problems out of my mind relatively easily. A characteristic which definitely came in handy on that sweaty July afternoon when I was given my diagnosis. Although, at least I had my diagnosis from a proper all-bells-and-whistles educational psychologist (which I am assured charges the government a hefty sum for each assessment), not some excuse-needing school teacher.

The assessment itself contained several different types of IQ tests along with an analysis of my past learning techniques. IQ tests come in many different forms but usually give quite consistent results across the range of tests for a ‘normal’ person. Ms. Psychologist gave me tests from the ‘Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale’ (in case anyone wants to look it up), she explained that the basic requirement for a diagnosis was a strong difference between scores in different types of tests – for example, a dyslexic will often score better in perceptual organisation tests than, maybe, verbal comprehension.

Anyway, the result in my case was bad – as everyone else see’s it. Like I said, luckily I’m able to forget about problems quite easily because it was pretty overwhelming. Everyone I told gave me the slanted head and pitty. Everyone, except for my father, he proceeded with “what?! But you’ve done it till now fine? Oh well, better not tell anyone – you don’t want people thinking… you’re a bit… well, you know… weird,” and it generally went downhill from there. Anyone who get’s diagnosed will soon find out that 90% of people think dyslexic = retarded…